Several readers who are members of the "first access club" have let us know that the demo for Duke Nukem Forever is now available on Steam for those who have preordered Gearbox's first-person shooter sequel or who own the Borderlands Game of the Year Edition. Apparently the Xbox LIVE version of the demo is also now available.

It's not up to date with eDuke32's improvements, but JonoF's port of Shadow Warrior should work with OpenGL support in Windows. Blood was given up as a lost cause years ago; there have been a couple of leaks of the source code, but nobody's 100% sure who owns it or how vigorously they'd choose to defend their moribund IP. Your best bet's DOSBox for the time being.

It's June 14 for people who aren't "first access members" and no I don't remember where I saw it but it was on here at some point. The demo is prepackaged in the wild already anyhow, look for it at the "usual" places.

Wasn't the worst demo ever, but certainly wasn't the best. Clearly the tech is a bit dated, and the consolitis is apparent. Nevertheless, I'm confident it will sell well. Hopefully patches can smooth out some of the rough edges.

I was expecting this game to be okay at best in terms of quality. But remember, something doesn't have to be good to still be awesome! I am playing it for nostalgia and some mindless fun with low expectations. I am still buying the collector's version out of respect to the developers for actually finishing it and for fondness of the franchise. Plus that Duke Nukem bust will look great next to my Geralt bust from Witcher 2 CE. Yeah, I'm one of those assholes who spends money on crap like that.

I just played and finished this demo. No complaints on the graphics but I was only expecting what we all saw seen previously on trailers.

Game play was pretty much standard shooter stuff. Not the worst, not the best, and basically what I expected.

Wasn't crazy about the level choices, as others have stated it seems like they picked the lamest couple of levels. I felt like I needed the Half-Life crowbar to deal with those crab things or whatever they were supposed to be in the mineshaft level. Took me a bit to get through that level as I was looking for a door and finally realized I had to jump up the scaffolding to exit the mineshaft, doh.

I'm glad it's finally done. I wasn't all that crazy about the original Duke(liked Quake series 1000x more), liked the DN Manhattan Project sidescroller, and was hoping this would be better than it was but I will play it because I am a FPS freak. Overall it's pretty average.

Got the beta, tried to play, looks like crap.Not talking about default graphics either, since I can't even see them because everything looks like the shaders and textures are totally jacked.Character models are green and yellow, wall textures flash, and some weird reflective mirror like substance covers everything with such a high lens flare, I can't tell what anything is half the time.Downloading it again didn't help either.Changing settings has no effect, and this is the only game with an issue even similar to this.Could be the drivers on my card (nvidia 460) have an incompatibility or something, they're 266.58.

The desert/mine level was really quite bad. Seems like it took all of a day to create. Just felt half-assed all around and definitely shouldn't have been used in the demo. With that mind, it does create some doubts as to how consistent the game will be. During its lengthy development, multiple developers have worked on the game so the quality will likely be all over the place. I'm hoping that the demo level was just the worst level in the game and that the other levels are significantly better.

This time I decided to try turning off the Post Processing Effects. The game looks better with it turned off. 1920x1080, vsync on, Textures on High, Shadows medium, Motion Blur on (I dont mind it with PP off). I also have Mouse Filter on 1, Sensitivity on 5. The game looks and controls much better for me with these settings.

Story? No clue if there even is one as they seemed to take 2 random levels from the game, made in different era's.

Gameplay is pretty standard. I definitely do not like the 2 weapon limit and short ammo supply on the weapons. Hoping this gets modded to open it up. It really is like the Stadium level was made since Gearbox took over, and the rest of the demo was made 8 years ago.

Game is way too easy on the hardest difficulty. I never once felt threatened during the Stadium battle, the bosses attacks are slow and spread apart. Circle Strafe, pickup ammo, dead boss. The pig models actually look pretty good. Everything else in the second half of the game looks old, which makes me worry about the rest of the game.

Going through it a second time with better controls and the annoyingly bad Post Processing effects turned off, I enjoyed it much more than I did the first time. Based on the random demo levels, and no multiplayer demo, it's a $15 or $20 game for me. If they have a MP demo, or after release I see some cohesive gameplay, I may increase the buy price.

Duke Forever finally see's the light of day, a shitty demo to show it off and it's like half the Blues population is on vacation.

I'll help.

I'm getting a kick out of the irrational expectations here considering we saw this 'exact' same demo running months ago on multiple videos across the internet.

Not to mention people going down a checklist of different qualities of the demo. DNF is a 12 year old gem not to enjoy the qualities of a modern game, but to enjoy the qualities of a game that should have come out around the same time of the y2k bug.

I pretty much agree with this post. I think it's asinine what half the people on here expected from the game. It's a relic that Gearbox decided to save and finally push out the door. If you expected Half Life 2 quality you're absolutely retarded. I'm enjoying the demo/game for what it is. A long lost icon saved from extinction. I didn't expect DX11 graphics or Shaders or any of that ridiculousness some of you seem to have think they planned on putting in.

Then it should be a $29.99 game. Or less. I wouldn't even pay 29.99 for this garbage.